


Doors

by Asphyxia



Category: BioShock Infinite
Genre: Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-06
Updated: 2014-01-06
Packaged: 2018-01-07 17:29:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1122527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Asphyxia/pseuds/Asphyxia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Booker DeWitt was the first variable, the thing that changed everything in all of those coexisting universes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Doors

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sonicsora](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sonicsora/gifts).



For as long as I can remember, I’ve been able to open doors. I called them tears, but they were doors. The only doors outside anything but that tower that I’d ever seen. I couldn’t go through them. Not after the cipher. But I could look at other worlds, dream about what it must be. To have freedom. To have something that was worth staying where I was for.

It took me until I was twenty, I suppose, to really understand that I existed in those worlds, behind those doors. That there were a million other versions of me, living different lives, seeing different things. Knowing different people. After the cipher was destroyed, I saw them all. It was knowing an infinite number of lives all at once, and I understood everything. Behind those doors, I was me, but I was someone else. I’d had different experiences, made different choices. And after that cipher was destroyed, the me who used to look through those doors ceased to exist. There was no world where I was imprisoned, and for that I was grateful. But the absence of that me was one I was aware of. There was no nosebleed. I hadn’t _died_. But that me was gone. It had nothing to do with my own awareness and everything to do with _his_.

Booker DeWitt was the first variable, the thing that changed everything in all of those coexisting universes for me. After the cipher was gone, after we broke down that tower, I could see all of those different versions of me, being impacted by his actions. In a strange twist of fate he was the only variable. He was the only thing that could change our existences. Mine. His. Comstock’s. In a way, I guess we were soulmates, but not in the conventional sense. Not in the romantic sense. He was my father. He was my friend.

He was my only hope.

For a lonely young girl locked in a tower, he was everything that lay beyond that door she couldn’t open.

And when it was opened, everything changed. I will never know whether it was for better or for worse, but I will always maintain that it would never be the same again. We took that journey together, and in the end it destroyed us, in so many ways. It set me free, but it destroyed us. Booker, especially. I guess I knew, after all those doors opened, that what happened in the end was inevitable. That I’d hold him under that water he ran away from so many years ago until the bubbles stopped.

_I’ll smother the bastard in his crib_.

Booker was the one who said it, but in the end it was a river, not a crib. It was not some infant Comstock that Booker thought he could blot out and change our destinies. It was him. And though he was the only one who didn’t see it coming, it never meant I wasn’t sorry. With so many constantly changing twists of fate, so many choices, there was really only one place that road could ever lead. In the end he was my first hope, and I was the thing that ended his life. If there had been another way, through any of those doors, it wouldn’t have ended the way it did.

Booker and Comstock. One and the same, with the only difference being the door they existed behind. When Booker died in that river, Comstock’s very existence ceased to be. Whether or not the same went for Booker, I will never be able to say. There are some doors I can’t open. Some doors I won’t open. But there still exists a piece of that man in my heart, and that alone can carry on whatever legacy a man like Booker DeWitt wants to leave behind in this world. This universe. 

But what I do know is that somewhere, in a small suburb of Paris there is a small girl with dark hair and blue eyes, and a father who holds her hands, ten fingers intact, and helps her down from a tree when she climbs too high. A father who buys her a puppy for Christmas and who takes her to the beach and always, always says yes when she asks him to dance. A father who locks all his dark memories in a wooden box high in the closet and whose hands are free of brands, and after years of darkness, he smiles.

If I had a word for it, it would be hope.

**Author's Note:**

> I enjoy crushing souls, so have this little piece as my contribution to this beautiful fanbase <3


End file.
